Published
reports & articles from 2000 to 2018 gvnet.com/humantrafficking/Mexico.htm

United Mexican States (Mexico)

Mexico has a free market economy in the trillion
dollar class. It contains a mixture of modern and outmoded industry and
agriculture, increasingly dominated by the private sector.

Per capita income is one-fourth that of the US; income
distribution remains highly unequal.

The administration
continues to face many economic challenges including the need to upgrade
infrastructure, modernize labor laws, and allow private investment in the
energy

sector. Calderon has
stated that his top economic priorities remain reducing poverty and
creating jobs.[The World Factbook, U.S.C.I.A. 2009]

Mexico is a large source, transit, and
destination country for persons trafficked for the purposes of commercial
sexual exploitation and forced labor. Groups considered most vulnerable to
human trafficking in Mexico include women and children, indigenous persons,
and undocumented migrants. A significant number of Mexican women, girls, and
boys are trafficked within the country for commercial sexual exploitation,
lured by false job offers from poor rural regions to urban, border, and
tourist areas. According to the government, more than 20,000 Mexican children
are victims of sex trafficking every year, especially in tourist and border
areas.- U.S. State Dept
Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2009[full country report]

CAUTION:The following links have been culled from
the web to illuminate the situation in Mexico.Some of these links may lead to websites
that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false.No attempt has been made to verify their
authenticity or to validate their content.

How's $600 to buy
what you'd like simply for accompanying men on trips? We can make it happen,
al otro lado — on the other side.That
pitch allegedly made by a trio of women sounded like gold to some
impressionable teens and a young woman not making much in Nuevo Laredo,
Mexico.Three girls agreed to be
smuggled to the United States in mid-May and once they were in or near San
Antonio, they were primped, new clothes were bought for them and they were
given English lessons. Their understanding was that they did not have to have
sex with the men.

But rather than the
glitz they were promised, they were sold in an underground world for
prostitution, according to prosecutors and documents filed in federal court
Friday.The girls were delivered to a
man in San Antonio referred to in court records as the "boss," who
had them strip, inspected their bodies and told them they were going to be
having sex with men for up to five years to pay off their smuggling debt.The "boss" said he had paid
$3,000 apiece for two of the girls and said he would pay even more to get
them ready for other men, witnesses told investigators, according to their
statements. Anyone who fled would die, and their families would also suffer
the same fate, the statements said.– HTUSAMX

Forced to have sex
with 60 men a day and tattooed with the name of their pimps: Human
trafficking victims tell of torture they suffered at hands of three brothers
who 'treated them like property'

PHOTO CAPTION --
Poverty-stricken: Tenancingo is relatively free of the drug gang violence
that has ravaged a large part of Mexico, but sex traffickers routinely kidnap
young women

Carmen was ferried
around the tri-state area and forced to have sex with men in their homes and
with seasonal workers in rural areas of Connecticut, New Jersey and New York,
she testified in court, according to the paper.The depraved pimp forced her to have sex
with as many as 60 men in one day.‘At the end of the day I was bleeding and in great pain caused by
these men,’ she recalled, adding that he would savagely beat her if she
wasn’t out earning money.Carmen
hoped her tormentor would beat her to death.I was upset because he hadn't killed me and that I had to live another
day of torture,’ she said.

Carmen finally
escaped in 2010 but was locked in suicide ward at a city hospital to keep her
from killing herself, she said it’s the only time she had felt safe in
years.– HTUSAMX

G4. DO INDIVIDUALS
ENJOY EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY AND FREEDOM FROM ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION?

Mexico is a major
source, transit, and destination country for trafficking in persons,
including women and children, many of whom are subject to forced labor and
sexual exploitation. Organized criminal gangs are heavily involved in human
trafficking in Mexico and into the United States. Government corruption is a
significant concern as many officials are bribed by or aide traffickers.

The bright lights
of Houston
are where a Mexican teenager saw hope in helping her mother. Smuggled into
Texas, the 15-year-old says XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX promised her restaurant
work.She hoped to send money back to
her ailing mother in Mexico, but the game changed when she reached Houston
four months ago."They forced
her into prostitution when she got over here, telling her that her family
would be injured or harmed if she did not comply," said Harris County
Asst. District Attorney Donna Hawkins.The DA's office says when she failed to reach her nightly quota at
local bars and cantinas, things turned violent."If she didn't make enough money by
prostituting herself at the cantinas, they would beat her," said
Hawkins.

A recent report
from the Cronkite News Service, a student-run news service of ArizonaStateUniversity, shed the national
spotlight on a new immigration problem plaguing the desert border towns of Arizona: so called “rape trees,” trees on the U.S.
side of the border littered with women’s undergarments. Mexican drug cartel
members and the coyotes, who smuggle immigrants across the border, are believed
to rape the women as soon as they enter U.S. territory to instill fear,
intimidate and control them. When the coyote-rapists are finished, they hang
the women’s panties from the trees as trophies to mark their brutal
conquests.

These “rape trees”
are becoming more common along the Arizona border counties of Pima and
Cochise, as coyotes and drug cartel members find human trafficking more
lucrative than drug smuggling.

The case centers on
an alleged marriage arrangement that went sour involving Marcelino de Jesus Martinez, his
14-year-old daughter and her suitor, Margarito de Jesus Galindo, 18. Galindo
had agreed to pay Martinez for his daughter's hand in marriage, according to
Greenfield police. According to the cops, the total cost was $16,000, one
hundred cases of beer and several cases of meat.

In the neighboring
market town of Juxtlahuaca, Maria Bautista sees the practice as coercive and
barbaric. "It's like a form of slavery. They buy their women and then
treat them like their property," says Bautista, a single mother with her
own business. Bautista has a Triqui father and Mixtec Indian mother, but she
speaks only Spanish and follows few of the old traditions. She cites the
cases of many older men who came back minted from working in the U.S. and who
bought themselves several young wives.

Down in the state
capital of Oaxaca, state human rights commissioner Heriberto Garcia also
chastised the custom. "Buying and selling a woman is a clear violation
of her rights," he says in his office decorated with leather-bound law
books. "And a young teenage girl does not have the experience to make
these decisions." Oaxaca state law permits marriage of women at 14 and
men at 16.

Mexican officials
have long tolerated arranged marriages, Garcia concedes, adding that he
doesn't know of any cases of prosecutions. But he says he will also propose
to amend a "Treatment of People" law to include an article that
makes bride-selling a criminal act. Such action is opposed by many who see
indigenous traditions as a virtue of Mexico's cultural diversity.

The female victims
were as young as 14-years old. They expected a better life in America only to
learn when they got here that they were sex slaves.

An indictment says
three of the men -- 31-year old Juan Cortez-Meza, 34-year old Amador
Cortez-Meza and 25-year old Francisco Cortez-Meza -- travelled to Mexico to
seduce and befriend the females with promises of a better life in
America."Once they started
dating them in Mexico they would get them to come to the US promising them
jobs in restaurants or cleaning houses and then when they got here they were
forced into prostitution," said Assistant United States Attorney Susan
Coppedge.

The indictment says
"The victims were beaten, threatened, or their families back in Mexico
were threatened in order to force the victims to work as prostitutes against
their will."

The girl was 14
years old when she was approached by a couple in her hometown of Veracruz
with an offer to work in their restaurant in America.After paying about $2,000 to cross the
Mexican border, she learned she'd be paying off the debt another way — by
becoming a prostitute.

From their home in
Veracruz, three brothers, their uncle and other Cadena-Sosa family members
recruited women from nearby small towns, often promising them $400 a week (10
times the local salary) in jobs picking fruit, house cleaning or working in
restaurants. In a few cases, they even were up front about the
prostitution.After crossing into the
United States, the women were told the truth about their work, and those who
resisted were raped or beaten, according to court records and interviews with
the victims conducted by FSU.Most of
the money they earned went to the family or to pay off smuggling debts. The
women also were charged for food, lingerie and forced abortions, making it
hard for them to ever completely clear their debts.

A number of U.S.
companies built plants there to take advantage of low-cost Mexican labor
after the 1993 passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Since
then, more than 400 women and girls have been raped and murdered in and
around the city of 1.4 million people. Countless more have disappeared,
presumably into the underworld of global human trafficking, where they are
forced into prostitution or other forms of modern-day slavery.

A new bid to halt toll of human trafficking

Claire Cooper & Christina Jewett, Sacramento Bee, May 20,
2006

archive.today/EL2NB

[accessed 25 August 2014]

Florencia Molina's
sewing teacher in Puebla,
Mexico,
unwittingly wrote Molina and herself one-way tickets into slavery.Good jobs, food and housing awaited them in
the United States, the teacher said. Molina had three days to decide.Both women learned after arriving in Los
Angeles that the jobs were sewing dresses for 17 hours a day with three
10-minute breaks for beans and rice.

At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 8 September 2011]

Salvador Fernando
Molina Garcia, 37, an illegal immigrant, has pleaded guilty to smuggling
girls and young women from Mexico
into Houston
and forcing them to work as prostitutes in local bars, according to federal
officials.

The single count
superseding indictment re-alleges that Gerardo Salazar, 40, is the leader of
a group of men who smuggled minor girls and young women from Mexico into the
United States. Using deception, threats of harm, physical force and
psychological coercion, Salazar compelled their service for prostitution in
Houston area bars.

After the coyotes
get the women across the border, safely on U.S. soil, they gang rape them to
show they have total control over them. They hang their panties in the trees
as signs of the conquest.If the women
are young and pretty, they are kept in houses of prostitution where they have
to have their families buy them out or work their way out. Of course, none
will testify to this because the coyotes know where they are from and can
seek revenge on their families in Mexico.

U.S. Embassy in Mexico
and the Foreign Relations Secretariat (SRE) Sign Agreement to Fight
Trafficking in Persons

Under
Secretary Gutierrez noted that “these programs are directed towards providing
comprehensive attention for victims on our common border, as well as in
southern Mexico; fighting sexual tourism involving minors; creating awareness
about the risks of trafficking in persons and related crimes; and deepening
the exchange of information and intelligence that will allow us dismantle,
apprehend and prosecute criminal organizations, while strictly applying the
laws of each country.”

UN panel sees grave women's rights abuse in
Mexico

Irwin Arieff, Reuters, United Nations, 26
Jan 2005

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[accessed 8 September 2011]

Some 320 women were
the victims of unsolved murders in Ciudad
Juarez between January 1993 and July 2003. Suggested
motives have included drug trafficking, trafficking in organs, trafficking of
women for sexual exploitation, domestic violence, sexual violence and the
production of violent videotapes.

News Investigation Into The Plight Of Young
Women Forced Into Horror Of Prostitution

Before the night is
over, the girls of "Zona Rosa" - a notorious red-light district
just a few blocks from the main tourist drag in this Mexican border town -
will make as much as $250 each by selling sex.It's cold-blooded sexual slavery - forced
prostitution that began when they were kidnapped from their small towns in Mexico and Central America and smuggled
through a dangerous corridor that leads into the United States.After they work their apprenticeships in Tijuana, many of the girls end up as sexual servants in New York's illegal
brothels.

Many of the girls
and young women had been promised work as maids and were smuggled into San
Diego from Mexico and Central America.However, authorities said they weren't able to build a strong-enough
case in the rush to rescue minors, and the charges were dropped.

Three Defendants Plead Guilty To Charges
Involving Forcing Young Mexican Women Into Sexual Slavery In New York

Press Release, The U.S.
Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York, April 05, 2005

During the plea
allocutions this morning, the defendants Josue Flores Carreto, Geraldo Flores
Carreto, and Daniel Perez Alonso, acknowledged that they recruited young,
uneducated Mexican women from impoverished backgrounds, smuggled them from
Mexico to the United States, and forced them to engage in prostitution. All
three defendants admitted to physically assaulting their victims on multiple
occasions and causing serious bodily injuries to them. They also admitted to
using threats of serious harm and physical restraint against the young
Mexican women to force them to commit acts of prostitution, and beating them
for hiding money, disobeying their orders, and failing to earn more money.
The victims were forced to perform acts of prostitution at a rate of $25 to
$35 per "John." Of that amount, the owners and managers of the
brothels took half, and the other half was taken by the defendants and other
members of the Carreto criminal organization.

When she arrived
she was raped by all three men and sold to a Yakuza organized crime boss, who
branded her across the chest with a 6-inch (15-centimeter) rose tattoo. He
forced her to provide sexual services to up to 40 clients a day, she said.

Annual Report Of Activities By The
Anti-Trafficking In Persons Section Of The Organization Of American States -
April 2005 To March 2006[DOC]

Sixth Meeting of Ministers of Justice or of
Ministers or Attorneys General of the Americas,
April 24 to 26, 2006, Santo Domingo,
Dominican Republic

MEXICO - The Anti-Human
Trafficking Workshop for Media and the Entertainment Industry Seminar was
held in Mexico
in December 2005. This event helped professionals in the entertainment
industry focus on the subject of human trafficking and, in particular, the
situation of trafficking victims, in order to assist writers and editors in
this field to incorporate realistic depictions of this scourge in their story
lines. The result of this undertaking was heightened public awareness about
the topic and increased prevention. As the entertainment industry more fully
comprehends human trafficking and portrays its real nature, the general
public will be better informed and persons potentially vulnerable to the
crime will be forewarned about the phenomenon.

The meeting
“Trafficking of Persons and the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Minors,”
organized by the executive committee the Inter-American Network of
Parliamentarian Women, was held in the Mexican city of Puebla on March 1,
2006. The OAS Anti-Trafficking in Persons Section was represented by its
Projects Director, Fernando García Robles, with his keynote address on
“Trafficking in Persons: A Transnational Problem.” The conference brought
together parliamentarians of both sexes, national and international
nongovernmental organizations, the international community, and civil society
in general. The OAS’s presence at this event was of great importance, since
the draft Decree Law to Prevent and Punish Trafficking in Persons was then
being studied by the Joint Congressional Committees on Justice, Human Rights,
and Legislative Studies.

The Protection Project – Mexico[PDF]

The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced
International Studies (SAIS), The Johns Hopkins University

www.protectionproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Mexico.pdf

[accessed 24 February 2016]

A Human Rights
Report on Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children

Olga got on the
plane with four other Russian girls. In that instant, they became the
personal property of an international slave trader. Olga's plane, however,
was headed to Mexico. Rashkovsky was planning to smuggle the women across the
notoriously unsupervised border between Mexico and the United States. He
brought the women to a hotel in Tijuana.

Olga, a consultant
to 48 Hours on this report,
returned to Mexico to retrace her steps. "It’s just old memories,"
she says. "The older I get, the more scarier it is to think about, what
could happen to me."

Girls like Olga are
sometimes put to work in Mexican strip clubs before heading north. But Mexico
is more than just a transit country and training ground for Eastern
Europeans. In its own right, Mexico
is the No. 1 country providing slaves to the United States, accounting for the
majority of federal trafficking cases.

Malevolent Bargains: Slavery Continues in
the Form of Forced Prostitution

At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 8 September 2011]

AMERICAN TASTE FOR
TRAFFICKED GIRLS
- Virtual sex is not the only decadent delicacy for some Americans; the
simple fact is that thousands of trafficked women and girls are ferried into
the U.S.
for the purpose of illicit sexual encounters.

In an article for
The Weekly Standard, Hughes wrote about the extent of the sex trafficking
industry that shuttles girls through Mexico to brothels outside San Diego,
California. "Over a 10-year period, hundreds of girls, 12 to 18 years
old," were brought into the U.S. by Mexican nationals."The girls were sold to farm workers
-- between 100 and 300 at a time -- in small 'caves' made of reeds in the
fields. Many of the girls had babies, who were used as hostages with death
threats against them, so their mothers would not try to escape," Hughes
said.

Told that they were
going to work in US factories or restaurants, these women and others like
them from poor Mexican communities were smuggled into the US only to be
forced into prostitution, says Venustiano, a farmworker that has befriended
some of the women. He says that the women do not protest how they are
treated because they fear deportation or retaliation against their
families.Most of the ten women at the
farm in Del
Mar are minors although the women vary in age from 14 to 22.

The lead defendant
in a forced prostitution case pleaded guilty today to charges that he and
fifteen others lured women from Mexico
and Florida with promises of good jobs and
better lives, only to force them into prostitution and hold them as sexual
slaves in brothel houses in Florida and the Carolinas.

Globalization

University of California, Berkeley, School
of Law, Clinical & Skills Programs, International Human Rights Law
Clinic, Projects & Cases

At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 8 September 2011]

U.S.-MEXICO
ANTI-TRAFFICKING WORKING GROUP - In April 2004, the Clinic and the Human
Rights Center convened a conference of international anti-trafficking experts
to strengthen protections for Mexican victims of human trafficking. Clinic
research on forced labor in the United States indicates that hundreds and
possibly thousands of Mexican men, women, and children are trafficked into
this country each year and forced to work in brothels, agriculture, and
sweatshops as modern day slaves. Yet even when victims manage to escape or
are rescued, their ordeal is not over. Family members of survivors who
prosecute their perpetrators have been intimidated or attacked in home
countries. Fear of reprisal against family members in the survivors' home
country once perpetrators are released from prison in the United States is an
on-going concern to survivors and delays their rehabilitation. Similarly,
fear that law enforcement will be unable to protect them or their families
discourages many victims from assisting in prosecution of their traffickers.

The
plaintiffs seeking legal relief and damages include: Juana Sierra Trejo,
Gabriela Flores Viegas, Ines Bello Castillo, Carmen Calixto
Rodriquez and Lucero Santes Vazquez, all of whom are originally
from Mexico. During their employment at the hotel, the women were
forced to work seven days per week, for up to 15 continuous hours a day,
without breaks. They were denied permission to eat, drink or use the
restroom. They were never paid overtime compensation for their
work.

Trafficking Alert - U.S. Edition,
March 2004

Vital Voices, March 2004

At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 8 September 2011]

RECENT NOTABLE
PROSECUTIONS BY THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE INCLUDE - Sentencing of
Florida Man on Human Trafficking Charges: On March 2, 2004, Ramiro Ramos was
sentenced to 15 years in prison for conspiring to hold migrant farm laborers
in involuntary servitude. Ramos was also ordered to forfeit property valued
at more than $3 million, and was ordered deported to Mexico. His brother,
Juan Ramos, was also convicted on charges of involuntary servitude, and will
be sentenced on May 3. The brothers reportedly transported Mexican men and women to Florida and forced them to
work until they paid off "transportation debts," and subjected them
to threats and beatings.

Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children
(CSEC) and Child Trafficking

WHERE CSEC IS OCCURRING TODAY? - Child sexual
exploitation of children occurs on every continent, except Antarctica, and is
most prevalent in countries stricken by poverty, political turmoil, and
corruption. In Cambodia , a nation still recovering from the war, famine, and
brutal dictatorship of the 1970s and ‘80s, sex tourism thrives. The
prostitution of girls as young as 5 years old is prevalent, particularly with
many tourists visiting Cambodia with the specific purpose of having sex with
prepubescent girls.[5] However, the practice is not limited to developing
countries. For example, girls and young women from many countries are
trafficked into the United States, often through Mexico, to become sex
slaves. Abducted, sold or abandoned by family, or lured by hollow promises of
jobs, school, and a better life, girls and women find themselves trapped,
earning no money, and living in highly restrictive settings with no personal
freedoms.

State ripe for racket in human trafficking

Daniel González, The ArizonaRepublic,
Mar. 30, 2004

At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 8 September 2011]

In the past six
years, the federal government has prosecuted five slavery rings involving a
total of 1,500 immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala, many of whom were
recruited in Chandler and Marana, to work in slavelike conditions picking
tomatoes and citrus on farms in south Florida, according to Lucas Benitez,
co-founder of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers based in Immokalee, Fla.

In some cases, the
workers were held against their will by armed guards and paid $40 to $50 a
week after their wages were garnisheed for housing, food and transportation
from Arizona to Florida, Benitez said.

VICTIMS - Migrants from
Central America or residents of the Mexican highlands hoping to get work on
farms or construction sites in the U.S.
come to Mexico’s
border towns in droves. Brought into the U.S. by “coyotes,” or smugglers,
those that survive the crossing often find themselves at the mercy of a
handler who delivers them to their ultimate work site. Unable to pay for
transportation or food, upon arrival a work foreman allegedly pays for these
services for them. Not speaking English (or, often, Spanish, in the case of
victims from Mexico’s
native population), they have little choice but to work off their so-called
“debts” at the work boss’s bidding. Such practices have long been the focus
of immigration officials in southern California
and the border areas of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona,
but South Florida is also “ground zero for
modern slavery,” a U.S. Justice Department official told THE NEW YORKER.
Successful prosecutions remain few: In the past six years, six cases have
been successfully prosecuted.

Nor do children
escape from Mexico’s
trafficking rings. As of 2001, according to UNICEF and the Mexican National
System for Integration of the Family, an estimated 16,000 children were used
for sexual exploitation within Mexico. Hondurans, Guatemalans,
and El Salvadorans were also among those at work in the sex industry.
Promising well-paying jobs, traffickers sell children to bar owners or to
other traffickers, who then use the meals and lodging provided as a so-called
debt that must be repaid. Some children are trained to operate in tourist
centers such as Acapulco, Cancun, or Guadalajara. Others
head to large border cities like Tijuana, Baja California, or Ciudad Juarez.

AMONG RECENT CASES - • In a
middle-class subdivision of Laredo, Texas, known for brick homes and
manicured yards, a 12-year-old Mexican girl sent by her family to clean and
provide childcare in exchange for schooling was found shackled in a backyard,
according to prosecutors. Police were summoned after a neighbor doing roof
work looked down, saw the girl and called 911.

The girl had been
chained after finishing her work, starved until she became so hungry she ate
dirt and tortured by having pepper spray blasted into her eyes when she dozed
off, prosecutors say. She was so weak, she had to be carried on a stretcher,
prosecutors say, and her skin had been seared red from days in the sun.

U.S., Canadian and
Mexican Representatives Meet to Combat Sexual Exploitation

Penn News, University
of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, November 28, 2001

New information
from the study reveals that more than 16,000 children in Mexico are engaged in
prostitution in just seven Mexican cities. Many of these children are victims
of national and intra-regional trafficking from poorer countries located in
Central and south America, including Costa Rica, Honduras and Guatemala.

"In many cases
the intended destination of these children is the U.S.," Estes said,
"but, owing to the more relaxed law enforcement practices toward sexual
predators in Mexico, many traffickers find they can make substantial profit
by exploiting the children through pornography or prostitution in Mexico City
or in Mexican resort communities frequented by Mexicans and foreigners."

At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 8 September 2011]

The human rights
situation in Mexico
continues to deteriorate. Different United Nations’ bodies specialized in the
protection of human rights , as well as the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights of the Organization of American States , have confirmed this
worrisome trend. Mexico occupies first place for reports of deaths during
detention received by the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or
Arbitrary Executions and third place for cases of disappearances presented
before the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, according
to their most recent reports. Similarly, the 1998 report issued by the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) stated that the practice of
illegal detention in Mexico constitutes a serious situation of human rights
violations due to its systematic character. Likewise, the Committee Against
Torture concluded in 1997, that torture is systematically practiced in
Mexico, especially by judicial police, and more recently, by members of the
Armed Forces under the pretext of combating subversive groups and
drug-trafficking. The Special Rapporteur on Torture confirmed that torture is
frequent throughout much of the country.

Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices

U.S. Dept of State
Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, March 8, 2006

TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS
– CISEN reported that trafficking is usually only one element of organized
criminal gang activities. Transnational and domestic organized criminal
networks and gangs were the primary perpetrators of trafficking in persons.
Many illegal immigrants fell prey to traffickers along the Guatemalan border,
where the growing presence of gangs such as Mara Salvatruchas and Barrio 18
made the area especially dangerous for unaccompanied women and children
migrating north, whose numbers continued to increase.

Most victims of
trafficking were poor and uneducated. Trafficking victims often related that
they were promised a good job, but once isolated from family and home, were
forced into prostitution or to work in a factory or the agriculture sector.
Other young female migrants recounted being robbed, beaten, and raped by
members of criminal gangs and then forced to work in table dance bars or as
prostitutes under threat of further harm to them or their families.

Concluding Observations of the Committee on
the Rights of the Child (CRC)

[32] While the
Committee is aware of the measures taken by the State party on the situation
of repatriated children (menores fronterizos), it remains particularly
concerned that a great number of these children are victims of trafficking
networks, which use them for sexual or economic exploitation. Concern is also
expressed about the increasing number of cases of trafficking and sale of
children from neighboring countries who are brought into the State party to
work in prostitution.